Europe

Ukraine tapped its dollar bonds on Thursday, as the certainty of disbursement of much-needed funding from the IMF remains unclear.

The UK government has announced its intention to dispose of some of its remaining 54.7% stake in NatWest, formerly Royal Bank of Scotland, through a pre-arranged trading plan which will see the government sell up to a 15% stake in the bank.

Barclays has hired seasoned investment banker and KfW board member Ingrid Hengster as its new country CEO for Germany and global chairman of investment banking.

Crédit Agricole has hired the former head of Santander's global banking and corporate finance business, Georg Orssich, in a regional management position.

UniCredit has quickly junked Jean Pierre Mustier’s legacy and forged a new strategy based on greater accountability, but the newly unveiled corporate and investment bank retains plenty of the character of the old one, writes David Rothnie.

Barclays has elevated Jean Francois (JF) Astier and John Miller to co-heads of investment banking as part of a raft of promotions in New York that also include the appointments of Kristin Roth DeClark and Taylor Wright as global co-heads of capital markets.

Pubic sector bond market participants are eagerly anticipating Thursday’s European Central Bank governing council meeting in which the ECB is expected to make a series of changes to align its policy to its new strategy.

Bridgepoint Group, the UK private equity firm, has seen its stock rocket on its first day after pricing a £907m IPO on the London Stock Exchange.

Bluefield Solar Income Fund, the London-listed investment trust focused on renewable energy assets, has tapped equity investors for £105.1m to repay debt and finance the acquisition of its first wind turbines.

Barclays has promoted from within to fill the role of head of investment banking for continental Europe that has been vacant since Carlo Calabria left earlier this year to concentrate on a special purpose acquisition company.

Reinout Böttcher is leaving UBS, where he was head of global banking for Switzerland, for a vice-chair role at JP Morgan in Zurich.

Robinhood’s mission to democratise stock markets is taking its inevitable next step with its own initial public offering, of which it says it will sell between 20% to 35% to retail investors. But while opening up the IPO investor base beyond the institutional investor clique sounds good in theory, such transactions remain extremely risky for retail investors.